A team of scientists from the University of Nottingham, in collaboration with an international team, has conducted the most stringent search yet for magnetic monopoles using a decommissioned beam pipe from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The research, published in Physical Review Letters, pushes the boundaries of what is known about these elusive particles.
Magnetic monopoles are hypothetical elementary particles that possess only one magnetic pole, either north or south. The search for these particles has remained a captivating mystery in theoretical physics, with experimental searches to date coming up empty-handed.
The team focused their search on a decommissioned section of the beam pipe from the LHC, which had been located at the particle collision point for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment. This pipe had endured radiation from billions of ultra-high-energy ion collisions occurring just centimeters away.
Although no evidence of magnetic monopoles was found, the results excluded the existence of monopoles lighter than 80 GeV/c2 and provided world-leading constraints for magnetic charges ranging from two to 45 base units. The team plans to extend their search, considering different strategies to find these elusive particles.
Source: https://phys.org/news/2024-08-large-hadron-collider-pipe-elusive.html